Posts from the “Feature Shoot” Category

Andres Serrano: Torture

Posted on January 3, 2018

Photo: “Fatima”, was Imprisoned and Tortured in Sudan, 2015. 60 x 50 inches. © Andres Serrano, courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery.

Last August, the unthinkable occurred. Just as the very first civil case involving CIA torture was about to go to trial, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced a settlement in the lawsuit against two psychologists, James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen, who designed and implemented the agency’s brutal program.

The ACLU brought the lawsuit on behalf of Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, and the family of Gul Rahman, who froze to death in a secret CIA prison. The three men were tortured and experimented on using methods developed by Mitchell and Jessen. Although the full terms of the settlement agreement are confidential, the outcome shows that those who engage in torture on behalf of the United States government can and will be held responsible.

Mitchell and Jessen have a sordid history in government-sponsored torture. In 2005, they founded a company that the CIA contracted to run its entire torture program and were paid $81 million for their services over several years. The psychologists tortured prisoners themselves, trained CIA personnel in their methods, and supplied interrogators to the agency’s secret “black site” prisons.

Until this historic win, every lawsuit against the CIA torture program had been dismissed at initial stages because lawyers for the government argued that letting the cases proceed would reveal state secrets. But not this time. Not only was the CIA forced to release secret records, but the doctors and high-ranking CIA officials Jose Rodriguez and John Rizzo had to testify about torture during depositions.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: Art, Feature Shoot, Photography

The Best Feature Stories of 2017

Posted on December 24, 2017

Omar Victor Diop, Dom Nicolau (Circa. 1830-1860) From the series: Project Diaspora 2014

2017 has been an incredible year as I dove head first into the deep end of the world of media. It has been filled with all kinds of high and lows, challenges and triumphs – but I wouldn’t have it any other way as it has strengthened my resolve, clarified my purpose, and given me the most extraordinary sense of self-reliance, personal responsibility, and determination.

At a time when just reading the headlines can feel like getting slapped in the face, where the future seems hopeless and life feels bleak, I’ve come to understand that I am not here to shadowbox with lies, to argue with the irrational, or sell out for popularity. Instead, I am here to provide a space for knowledge, wisdom, and understanding garnered by some of the most incredible minds of our times, those who have dedicated their lives to questioning the status quo, to exploring new paths to freedom and liberation. I am here to share these stories so that you may find a place for inspiration, enlightenment, and positive vibes.

Rather than look away from the difficulties of life, I am attracted to those who have faced them head on, surmounted them, and lived to tell the tale. They speak for so many who we have lost, who have been silenced or disappeared, or simply are not in a position to tell the story for themselves. I find beauty in truth, integrity, authenticity, originality, and courage in whatever form it comes. Though justice may be non-linear, it is inevitable.

Photo: Copyright Jamel Shabazz

Photographer Jamel Shabazz Reflects on the Memories That Shaped His Vision of New York Street Style (Vogue)

When Jamel Shabazz took up photography back in the 1980s, he gave voice to a new generation of young black men who were redefining the look of street-level New York City with their colorful Kangol caps, Adidas shell-toe sneakers, and graphic Cazal glasses. A former corrections officer, Shabazz would wander neighborhoods like Harlem, Brownsville, and the Lower East Side with his camera, approaching strangers who caught his eye, engaging them in conversation, and concluding with a portrait. Read the full story at Vogue.

Charlie Ahearn, DJ AJ 2 from the series Scratch Ecstasy, 1980 © the artist and courtesy P.P.O.W.

Picturing the Early Days of Hip-Hop (Aperture)

Hip Hop came of age inside the cinderblock walls of the Ecstasy Garage Disco in the Boogie Down Bronx. By 1980, it was the place to be as the flyest DJs and MCs honed their skills among their peers. In tribute, filmmaker Charlie Ahearn has teamed up with Grand Wizzard Theodore, inventor of the scratch, to recreate their weekly slide show as the centerpiece of Ahearn’s exhibition Scratch Ecstasy, currently on view at P.P.O.W. Gallery. Miss Rosen, who worked with Ahearn on his 2007 book, Wild Style: The Sampler, speaks with Ahearn and Theodore about the interplay between sight and sound in the development of Hip-Hop culture during its formative years. Read the full story at Aperture.

Photography Ricky Flores

How Hip Hop Rose From the Ashes of the Bronx (Dazed)

The South Bronx became infamous during Game 2 of the 1977 World Series, when newscaster Howard Cosell noticed a nearby abandoned school engulfed in flames and not a fire truck in sight, uttering his legendary phrase, “There it is, ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning.”

The Bronx had been burning throughout the 70s, in a massive series of fires set by arsonists working on behalf of landlords who knew they could collect more money from insurance fraud than they could from rent. From 1970 to 1980, more than 97 per cent of seven census tracts in the South Bronx had been lost to fire and abandonment, turning the once majestic neighborhood into blocks of rubble resembling a war zone. Yet, through it all, the people of the Bronx persevered. Read the full story at Dazed.

Brothers with Their Vines, Coney Island, NY, 1976 Photography Arlene Gottfried, courtesy of Daniel Cooney Fine Art

How Arlene Gottfried Photographed NYC’s Truest Self (Dazed)

“Only in New York, kids, only in New York.”

American columnist Cindy Adams’ famed bon mot could easily caption any number of photographs in the archive of Arlene Gottfried. Whether partying in legendary 1970s sex club Plato’s Retreat, hanging out at the Nuyorican Poet’s Café with Miguel Piñero, or singing gospel with the Eternal Light Community Singers on the Lower East Side, Arlene was there and has the pictures to prove it. It was in her beloved city that Arlene Gottfried drew her final breath. She died the morning of August 8, after a long illness that may have taken from her body but never from her heart. Read the full story at Dazed.

At dawn, the Manhattan skyline shows no lights due to a power blackout, New York, New York, July 14, 1977. The photo was taken from Jersey City, New Jersey. (Photo by Allan Tannenbaum/Getty Images).

How the Blackout of 1977 Helped Hip Hop Blow Up (Crave)

On the evening of July 13, 1977, DJ Disco Wiz and his partner Casanova Fly (later Grandmaster Caz) were in the park on Valentine and 183rd Street in the Bronx with their sound system set up for a battle with a local cat they had regularly been blowing off. But DJ Eddie wouldn’t take no for an answer, so they relented and gave him a chance to make a name for himself.

The city had been going through a ten-day heat wave with temperatures above 100. Wiz was concerned if their small portable fans would keep the amps cool, as they didn’t have internal cooling systems. Although it was hot and humid, people were having a good time. Around 9:30 p.m., Caz got on the turntables. Then the record slowly spun to a stop. Read the full story at Crave.

Jamila Woods

Black Women Poets You Need to Know (Dazed)

2017 has been a watershed year for Black women speaking truth to power while reclaiming their time, transforming the conversation and controlling the narrative. We have reached the tipping point, wherein new voices burst forth on the global scene, in every field from business to politics, science to sports, photography to poetry.

On September 3, Pulitzer Prize-wining poet Tracy K. Smith signed in for duty as the United States Poet Laureate – the highest position a poet is given by the government, with the express purpose of raising the national consciousness of reading and writing poetry.

Smith is in tremendous company, as a bevy of Black women are publishing new books of poetry, sharing their art, wisdom, and vision of life with the world. We spotlight seven poets whose work shows us the way that verse can transform the way we understand ourselves, each other, and life itself. Read the full story at Dazed.

Omar Victor Diop, Don Miguel de Castro, Emissary of Congo (c. 1643-50). From the series: Project Diaspora 2014.

Self Portraits by Senegalese Photographer Omar Victor Diop Recreate Historic Portraits (Feature Shoot)

The great African proverb wisely observes, “Until the lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.”

The lion has arrived in the form of Omar Victor Diop, a rising star in the photography world. Born 1980, in Dakar, Senegal, Diop has inherited the great traditions of African studio photography and takes them to the next level in his new exhibition, Project Diaspora, currently on view at SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film in Atlanta, GA, through August 18, 2017.

In Project Diaspora, Diop tells the story of the lions of African history through the recreation of historic portrait paintings of key figures in art, politics, theology, and trade living between the 15th and the 19th centuries. This particular period reveals the complex relationship between African and the rest of the world, as European imperialist forces ransacked the continent, enslaving its people, occupying its lands, and looting its natural resources. Read the full story at Feature Shoot.

Shedding Light on the Suffering of Animals in Captivity
(Feature Shoot)

The path to truth is a long and arduous road, traveled by the few who can withstand the slings of arrows and bows. It takes courage and strength to allow the myths to fall away and stand face to face with the cold heart of reality. Photographer Colleen Plumb set for on this path many years ago, looking to understand the relationship between wo/man and animal that we have inherited from our ancestors.

“Then God said: Let us make* human beings in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the tame animals, all the wild animals, and all the creatures that crawl on the earth,” Genesis 1:26 decreed, creating a divide that would come to result in an oppressive hierarchy. Read the full story at Feature Shoot.

“Portrait of Wangechi Mutu, Mamiwata”, 2017 oil on canvas painting: 94 7/16 x 120 1/8 inches (239.9 x 305.1 cm)framed: 104 7/8 x 130 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches (266.4 x 331.5 x 11.4 cm) © Kehinde Wiley, courtesy Sean Kelly, New York

View a Series of Portraits of Extraordinary Black Artists (Dazed)

The Trickster exists in different cultures around the globe: the wily shapeshifter with the power to transform the way we see the world. As an archetype, The Trickster can be found in any walk of life where people must operate according to more than one set of rules, moving seamlessly between the appearance of things and the underlying truth.

Artists know this realm well for they are consigned to delve deep below the surface and manifest what they find. Yet their discoveries are not necessarily in line with the status quo; more often than not, they will upset polite society and upend respectability politics by speaking truth to power – quite literally.

In the United States, African Americans know this well. Throughout the course of the nation’s history, they have been forced to deal with systemic oppression and abuse in a culture filled with double speak that began with the words “All men are created equal,” penned in the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson, a man who kept his own children as slaves until his death. Read the full story at Dazed.

A Night on the Town with LA’s Queer Vaqueros (Huck)

Santa Monica Boulevard is one of Los Angeles’ most fabled thoroughfares, running West from Silver Lake, through Hollywood and Beverly Hills all the way to Ocean Avenue, just off the Pacific. “There are different areas on Santa Monica that have different flavours,” photographer Sean Maung, an LA native, explains. “When you say ‘Santa Monica Boulevard,’ most people think of West Hollywood, which has a very strong gay and lesbian scene. But I’ve always been really attracted to Santa Monica Boulevard in East Hollywood.”

The random mix of people from local Russian, Thai, and Latino communities appealed to Maung, who has been documenting the street culture of his hometown for over a decade. While photographing transgender prostitutes working the street late at night, Maung saw the words “Club Tempo” on an orange sign in front of a mall and thought to himself, “What’s Club Tempo? And why is it in the back of a strip mall in East Hollywood?’” Read the full story at Huck.

Michael Lavine for Bad Boy Records

The Story behind The Notorious B.I.G.’s spooky ‘Life After Death’ Album Cover (The Undefeated)

Twenty years have passed, but the shock is still fresh — and still incomprehensible. On March 9, 1997, Christopher Wallace, aka The Notorious B.I.G., was gunned down in a drive-by shooting. It remains unsolved.

At 12:30 a.m., Wallace left a Vibe magazine Soul Train Music Awards after-party at Los Angeles’ Petersen Automotive Museum. The SUV in which he was traveling stopped at a red light just 50 yards from the venue. A dark Chevrolet Impala SS pulled up along the passenger side. The driver rolled down his window, drew his weapon and fired. Four bullets struck Wallace. He was rushed to nearby Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and was pronounced dead at 1:15 a.m.

Not long afterward, The Notorious B.I.G. rose again. Read the full story at The Undefeated.

A Road Map Through the Life of Roger Ballen (Feature Shoot)

When Roger Ballen graduated from high school in 1968, his parents gave him a Nikon FTn camera. It was flown over from Hong Kong by a friend and lost in customs for several weeks before it finally arrived. The day that Ballen received it, he headed to the outskirts of Sing Sing prison to take photographs, a prescient moment to launch a journey in photography like no other before or since.

His name alone conjures up curious and disturbing visions of an uncanny world, one that recalls the spaces of the dreamscape, theaters of the unconscious. Here reality is a construction, but it is also something else: it is the space where our minds are released from rational sensibilities. To describe the work as unnerving would be polite. It is as though the non-linear spaces of the mind are given full flight. Read the full story at Feature Shoot.

Gordon Parks: Red Jackson, Harlem, New York, 1948; gelatin silver print; 19 1/2 x 15 3/4 in. Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation.

A Fresh Look at Gordon Parks’ Photo Essay “Harlem Gang Leader” (Feature Shoot)

1948 was a watershed year in the career of American photographer Gordon Parks. An established fashion photographer who had been working on assignment for LIFE magazine, Parks was also an accomplished author, publishing his second book, Camera Portraits, a collection of his work accompanied by professional observations about posing, lighting, and printing. At the same, time, Parks longed for something deeper and more essential to his soul.

“Photographing fashion was rewarding but for me somewhat rarefied,” he revealed in his memoir, Half Past Autumn. “Documentary urgings were still gnawing at me, still waiting for fulfillment.”

He met with his editors to make his very first pitch: the story of Leonard “Red” Jackson, the 17-year-old leader of the Midtowners, a Harlem gang that had been caught up in the turf warfare that had been plaguing the neighborhood throughout the decade. He showed them 21 pictured edited from a body of hundreds photographs made over a period of four weeks made shadowing Red as he went about his business. The work tells the story of survival in its most poignant form, caught in the space where poverty, oppression, and violence foment and froth. Read the full story at Feature Shoot.

‘Untitled’ Photo by Michael A. McCoy. Baltimore Uprising, Baltimore, MD, 2015

Six Tips for Aspiring Protest Photographers (Huck)

After completing two tours of duty in Iraq in 2008, U.S. Army combat veteran Michael A. McCoy turned to turned to photography as a therapeutic tool to deal with the horrors of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. With a camera in his hands, McCoy could escape from the memories of being inside a war zone as photography enabled him to be full present in the moment, bare witness, and share his story with the world.

The 2014 death of Mike Brown at the hands of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson changed everything. The protests that raged across the city sparked a movement against police brutality and the killing of black men, women, and children at the hands of law enforcement officials. For McCoy, Ferguson was the moment of truth.

“I started photographing protests because I wanted to start documenting history,” he explains. “I realized that I could use my camera as a tool and amplify the issues affecting myself and my community that need to be heard. I could have been Mike Brown, Freddie Gray, Trayvon Martin, or Eric Garner.” Read the full story at Huck.

Kissing Doesn’t Kill, Gran Fury, 1989–1990, four-color bus-side poster, ink on PVC, 30 × 140 in. For Art Against AIDS On The Road.

How to Spark Serious Social Change, Using Art (Huck)

During the early years of the AIDS crisis, when an HIV positive diagnosis meant certain and gruesome death, Avram Finkelstein became a pivotal figure in ACT UP, the direct action advocacy group that worked tirelessly to combat U.S. government silence around the disease.

“Power structures count on our silence, but that doesn’t mean we’re obliged to give it to them,” Finkelstein remembers. “Raising your voice is a tremendous threat, and it’s the only threat you ever have to make.”

As co-founder of the collective Silence = Death and member of the art group Gran Fury, Finkelstein worked tirelessly to raise awareness and fight the power through a powerful combination of art and activism. “When words and images are combined, their power increases exponentially,” Finkelstein explains. “We thought: Why not just sell political agency the same way everything else is sold to us?” Read the full story at Huck.

‘The Rumble in the Jungle’ — and the Poster That Sold It (The Undefeated)

In the darkest night part of morning they came 60,000 strong — to watch undefeated world heavyweight champion George Foreman take on challenger Muhammad Ali. It was another time. The 20th of May Stadium in Kinshasa, Zaire, is now the Stade Tata Raphaël in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and The Rumble in the Jungle, as it was known, was scheduled to begin at 4 a.m. local time on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 1974. This was so the match originally titled From Slave Ship to Championship would air live on closed-circuit television in U.S. theaters at 10 p.m. EST.

From backstage, journalist Norman Mailer described the scene. Although his entourage was somber, Ali appeared relaxed as he addressed himself in a mellifluous tone: “I been up and I been down. You know, I been around. It must be dark when you get knocked out. Why, I’ve never been knocked out. I’ve been knocked down, but never out.” Read the full story at The Undefeated.

Dissecting the Political Impact of Acid House (Dazed)

Back in 1979, in a Chicago nightclub called The Warehouse, DJ Frankie Knuckles helped incubate the nascent genre of house music. Taking its name from The Warehouse, house music spread through the US underground and around the globe, and in London, it transformed into something entirely new. The acid house movement combined the hippie spirit found on the island of Ibiza with the sensation of taking a trip, be an ecstasy pill, a hit of acid, or a plane ticket to a faraway land.

By 1987, acid house had taken UK by storm with an irrepressible, revolutionary energy that evoked the utopian vibes of the Summer of Love. Peace, love, respect, and unity were the order of the day, albeit within the confines of illegal parties that were cropping up across the country, drawing thousands of revelers from all walks of life who wanted nothing more than to dance through the dawn. But the acid house scene was more than a cosmic display of hedonism. It was a movement that subverted the racial and class boundaries of Margaret Thatcher’s seemingly endless premiership. Although its political impact is often overlooked, acid house united a deeply segregated society, and what’s more, it empowered those who have been written out of history to rise and come to the fore. Read the full story at Dazed.

Intimate Photos of a ‘Family’ of Sex Workers in Budapest (Dazed)

Lilla Szasz fell into the underworld when she began documenting teen girls living in a detention home in Budapest. Here, she met girls who had turned to sex work to survive. While they were locked up, pimps waited outside the gates for their release, with ample supplies of drugs to keep them caught in a cycle of addiction and debt.

Their tragic stories spoke to Szasz. She yearned to know more about the people living on the edge, on the margins of society. In 2008, she travelled to downtown Budapest, where she met Monica and Michael, young sex workers who shared a flat. Their neighbours had been extorting them, threatening to call the police, so they moved to a larger place in the slums, where no one cared what they did. Read the full story at Dazed.

Meat Joy, 1964. Courtesy of Carolee Schneemann

Art Pioneer Carolee Schneemann Looks Back On 50 Years Of Work (Bust)

Artist. Feminist. Revolutionary. Carolee Schneemann, now 77 years old, has been traversing the sacred spaces of female sexuality and gender in the name of truth, liberation, and freedom from the patriarchy for more than half a century. Raised on a farm in rural Pennsylvania, Schneemann learned not to fear viscera, injury, or death. Instead, she embraced the creative and destructive forces of Mother Nature and fused them into work that challenged every assumption about women in the art world.

A multidisciplinary artist, Schneemann has created groundbreaking paintings, photographs, performance-art pieces, and installations that expose deep female secrets, pleasures, fears, and taboos. Using her body as a starting point, Schneemann also challenges cultural norms that discourage female artists from using their own nude bodies as the subjects of their work. Most memorably, in her landmark piece, Interior Scroll (1975), Schneemann stood on a table, assumed “action poses,” then slowly extracted and read from a scroll tucked neatly inside her vagina. Read the full story at Bust.

A Brief History of Thierry Mugler’s High-Voltage Fashion (Dazed)

The legendary house of Thierry Mugler occupies the space between fashion and myth, manned by a designer so visionary that no less than Beyoncé, David Bowie and Lady Gaga have called upon him to create couture so haute your body temperature rises just looking at pictures of it. In celebration of his iconoclastic career, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts has announced plans for Thierry Mugler: Creatures of Haute Couture, slated to open in February 2019. It will be the first solo exhibition of the designer’s work.

For over two decades, Mugler was a reigning force in fashion, an enfant terrible who defied bourgeois sensibilities with his spectacular looks and magnificent, sometimes almost hour-long runway shows. “I have always been fascinated by the most beautiful animal on the Earth: the human being,” Mugler revealed on the occasion of the exhibition’s announcement. That fascination led him to create clothes which transformed the wearers into futuristic femme fatales, whose superpowers were seduction and self-assurance. Read the full story at Dazed.

Categories: Aperture, Art, Dazed, Feature Shoot, Huck

Magnum Contact Sheets

Posted on December 11, 2017

Photo: Iran. Tehran. 1986. Veiled women practice shooting on the outskirts of the city. © Jean Gaumy/Magnum Photos

We would like to believe that photographs convey an element of truth, that in the fraction of a second recorded for posterity, we have captured something that lies beyond mere celluloid of digital technology – something we can gaze upon and discover verifiable facts, unearth an ineffable aspect of reality that lies beneath the surface.

Perhaps this is possible, in as much as we wish to believe it so, but when we consider that the single frame lies in a larger body of work can we be absolutely sure that we’re not being guided by the aesthetic power of the form. Are we not sentient beings whose powers and perceptions of sight heavily influenced by the perfection of the art?

It may be the best way to know is to consider the context, in as much as it is available to us: the circumstances of the moment, the players, the photographer themselves. And, if we are to consider the artist, where does this image fall, not only within their oeuvre but more specifically in project from which it is drawn? This is where the contact sheet comes in.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Photo: Iran. Tehran. 1986. Veiled women practice shooting on the outskirts of the city. © Jean Gaumy/Magnum Photos

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Photography

Roger Ballen: Ballenesque

Posted on December 8, 2017

“A shadow runs through my work,” Ballen observes in the magnificent new book, Ballenesque: A Retrospective (Thames & Hudson). “The shadow spreads, grows deeper as I move on, grow older. The shadow is no longer indistinguishable from the person they call Roger. I track my shadow (life) through these images.”

Ballenesque provides a road map through this life, bringing us along the trail that the shadow has traveled over the past five decades. One of his most telling photographs was taken at the very start, a photograph of a dead cat lying on a street in New York. Made in 1970, it has all the hallmarks of what is to come: the strange un-reality of this dead creature, a line that suggested the presence of the entry to a netherworld, an a car driving into the distance, into the great beyond.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Africa, Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Photography

Gordon Parks: The Making of an Argument

Posted on November 22, 2017

Photo:Gordon Parks: Red Jackson, Harlem, New York, 1948; gelatin silver print; 19 ½ x 15 ¾ in. Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation.

Photo: Gordon Parks: Untitled, Harlem, New York, 1948; gelatin silver print with applied pigment; 4 ½ x 4 ½ in. Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation.

1948 was a watershed year in the career of American photographer Gordon Parks. An established fashion photographer who had been working on assignment for LIFE magazine, Parks was also an accomplished author, publishing his second book, Camera Portraits, a collection of his work accompanied by professional observations about posing, lighting, and printing. At the same, time, Parks longed for something deeper and more essential to his soul.

“Photographing fashion was rewarding but for me somewhat rarefied,” he revealed in his memoir, Half Past Autumn. “Documentary urgings were still gnawing at me, still waiting for fulfillment.”

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Photo: Gordon Parks: Red Jackson with His Mother and Brother, Harlem, New York, 1948; gelatin silver print; 10 5/8 x 13 in. Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation.

Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot, Photography

Bonnie & Clyde: The End

Posted on November 14, 2017

Photo: Anonymous, Bonnie & Clyde, Kissing & Embracing, 1933. Courtesy PDNB Gallery, Dallas, TX.

There is nothing more American than the anti-hero, the fearless, go-for-self radical who rejects all social norms, subverting the system in order to win by breaking the rules. They occupy a space that defies the paradigm of villainy, inspiring a legion of fans and followers to cheer them on to what is very often an unfortunate fate. Though they may be amoral, immoral, and unethical, they tap into the urges of the unchecked id. Let’s call it vicarious living at its most primal state – that which few would do themselves but would gladly enjoy via proxy.

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow embodied this to the fullest extent, adding the added touch of romance to the primordial death wish. During the “Public Enemy Era” of the 1930s, when the nation was reduced to tatters and desperate living, criminals became the new superstar, proudly flouting their ill-gotten. While high profile gangsters like John Dillinger and Al Capone kept the public mesmerized with high profile affairs, a couple of regular folks named Bonnie & Clyde quickly became household names.

They were barely out of their teen years when they met in 1930 in East Dallas. Clyde, already an ex-convict, was re-imprisoned for auto theft. Bonnie got on her game and smuggled a gun into prison so that Clyde could escape and be reunited with the one he loved. After being caught and sent back to jail, he was finally released in 1932 – and that’s where our story begins.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Anonymous, Clyde Barrow’s Criminal Record, 1934. Courtesy PDNB Gallery, Dallas, TX.

Categories: Art, Feature Shoot, Photography

Alexander Missen: Q&A

Posted on November 7, 2017

The United States is built on myth, dating back to the earliest days of the republic, when Thomas Jefferson wrote, “All men are created equal,” without any self-awareness. A slaveholder claiming equality — what kind of world could spawn such profoundly pathological cognitive dissonance?

It is “self-evident” as Jefferson would say: one that considered itself “enlightened” enough to use reason and logic to uphold irrational beliefs; to craft holidays like “Thanksgiving” that celebrated the wholesale slaughter of Native Americans and whitewash history; to name cities, towns, and counties after Christopher Columbus, the architect of the Transatlantic Slave Trade — to do all these things and play innocent.

The myth of “America” has appealed for hundreds of years. “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore” wrote poet Emma Lazarus, whose words were placed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1903. “Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me.”

Maybe they’ll make the cut, maybe not. Maybe boats filled with fleeing Jewish refugees will be turned around and set back to Nazi Germany; maybe their rafts filled with Haitian boat people fleeing Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier were deported upon arrival throughout the 1980s. How sonnets written in their name have school children memorized?

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot

Samuel Fosso: Self-Portraits

Posted on October 18, 2017

At the tender age of 13, Samuel Fosso set up Studio Photo Nationale, and began his career as a photographer. The year was 1975, and Fosso was working in the city of Bangui, located just inside the border of Central African Republic.

“With Studio National, you will be beautiful, stylish, dainty and easy to recognize,” Fosso promised. Here he works taking passport, portrait, and wedding photographs for the community—but it was his self-portraits that brought the artist global acclaim.

“I started taking self-portraits simply to use up spare film; people wanted their photographs the next day, even if the roll wasn’t finished, and I didn’t like waste. The idea was to send some pictures to my mother in Nigeria, to show her I was all right.,” Fosso told The Guardian in 2011. “Then I saw the possibilities. I started trying different costumes, poses, backdrops. It began as a way of seeing myself grow up, and slowly it became a personal history – as well as art, I suppose.”

And from this seed of genius, a life’s work arose, one that is rooted in the complexity of layering, meaning, and identity inherent to the self, and just how plastic these things are when we skate along the surface of life, mistaking appearances for the thing they claim to represent.

Like a great actor, Fosso delves deep within himself and returns with an understanding of human nature and the way it manifests in the body, and on the face, through costume, gesture, and expression. For the past forty years, Fosso has honed his craft, creating a body of work that examines the experience of life as a West African man.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: 1970s, Africa, Art, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot, Photography

Marvin E. Newman: The XXL Collector’s Edition

Posted on September 4, 2017

Now in his 89th year, American photographer Marvin E. Newman is receiving his due as one of the finest street photographers of the twentieth century. His self-titled monograph, just released as a XXL Collector’s Edition from Taschen showcases his vibrant collection of cityscapes made in New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles—as well as in the Heartland of the nation and the outskirts of Alaska between the years 1950 and 1983.

Born in the Bronx in 1927, Newman studied photography and sculpture at Brooklyn College with Walter Rosenblum. He joined the Photo League in 1948 before moving to Chicago the following year to study with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind at the Institute of Design. “They taught you to keep your mind open and go further, and always respond to what you are making,” Newman remembered.

It was here in Chicago that Newman began to shoot in color film, doing so at a time long before the medium was recognized. His comfort with color is evident throughout his work, as it becomes a harmonizing force and a whirlwind of energy and emotion as much as light itself.

After obtaining his degree in 1952, Newman returned to New York, which was undergoing a major change in the years immediately following the war. At the same time, the artist’s eye as developing and transforming his experience of life. He observed, “I was beginning to see the world in photographic terms. You start to see everything as a rectangle of some sort and see things that you feel are just made to be photographed.”

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Photography

Omar Victor Diop: Project Diaspora

Posted on August 3, 2017

Photo: Omar Victor Diop, Don Miguel de Castro, Emissary of Congo (c. 1643-50). From the series: Project Diaspora 2014 . Pigment inkjet print on Harman Hahnemuhle paper 47 1/4 x 31 1/2 in. Edition of 8 + 2 APs. In 1643 or 1644, Don Miguel de Castro and two servants arrived as part of a delegation sent by the ruler of Sonho, a province of Congo, via Brazil to the Netherlands. One objective of the journey was to find a resolution to an internal conflict in Congo. Original painting attributed to Jaspar Beck or Albert Eckout. Photo: © Omar Victor Diop. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie MAGNIN-A, Paris, France.

Photo: Omar Victor Diop, A Moroccan man (1913). From the series: Project Diaspora 2014. Pigment inkjet print on Harman Hahnemuhle paper 47 1/4 x 31 1/2 in. Edition of 8 + 2 APs. Jose Tapiro y Baro was a Catalan painter. One of his closest friends was the painter Maria? Fortuny with whom he shared an interest for Orientalism. He was a master of watercolor painting. Original Painting by Jose? Tapiro y Baro. Photo: © Omar Victor Diop. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie MAGNIN-A, Paris, France.

The great African proverb wisely observes, “Until the lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.”

The lion has arrived in the form of Omar Victor Diop, a rising star in the photography world. Born 1980, in Dakar, Senegal, Diop has inherited the great traditions of African studio photography and takes them to the next level in his new exhibition, Project Diaspora, currently on view at SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film in Atlanta, GA, through August 18, 2017.

In Project Diaspora, Diop tells the story of the lions of African history through the recreation of historic portrait paintings of key figures in art, politics, theology, and trade living between the 15th and the 19th centuries. This particular period reveals the complex relationship between African and the rest of the world, as European imperialist forces ransacked the continent, enslaving its people, occupying its lands, and looting its natural resources.

As a result, the history of the African people extends far beyond the continent as the diaspora takes hold. Millions of people are captured, enslaved, and sold to foreign imperialists who seized North and South Americas. At the same time, the peoples who remained on the continent were forced to deal with what the invaders wrought, their lives and history disrupted and often times destroyed by the inhumanity practiced by those who claimed to live in “The Age of Reason.”

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot, Painting, Photography

James Baldwin: The Fire Next Time

Posted on August 2, 2017

Photo: James Baldwin joined the fight for equality in the South. Mostly, he offered a passionate voice for justice and a plea for a nation’s salvation. In Mississippi in 1963, he visited the NAACP’s Medgar Evers, who was slain later that June, following President Kennedy’s landmark televised address on civil rights. This photo was recently discovered in the photographer’s contact sheets. © 2017 Steve Schapiro.

James Baldwin penned fire to purify truth and liberate it from the lies that have clouded United States history ever since Thomas Jefferson wrote The Declaration of Independence. With every sentence, Baldwin burned away the toxic stench of injustice, oppression, and pathology that so many cling to until their dying day.

One of Baldwin’s greatest works is The Fire Next Time, a collection of two essays originally published by The New Yorker and subsequently published by Dial Press in 1963 in book form. The essays, “My Dungeon Shook — Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of Emancipation,” and “Down At The Cross — Letter from a Region of My Mind” address the issues facing African Americans during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, as they faced down the horrors of the past and present each and every single day.

Now, Taschen introduces James Baldwin. The Fire Next Time, a collector’s edition of 1,963 copies reprinted in a letterpress edition with more than 100 photographs taken by Steve Schapiro while he was on assignment for LIFE magazine. Schapiro was on the frontlines of the movement as it marched across the South facing down the system of apartheid under Jim Crow.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: 1960s, Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Photography

Posts from the “Feature Shoot” Category

Posted on January 3, 2018

Posted on December 24, 2017

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Posted on August 2, 2017

Shedding Light on the Suffering of Animals in Captivity
(Feature Shoot)